“Dreamer” Deal Collapses in Senate: Has Trump Played Them All?

The apparent collapse of the Trump administration’s “immigration deal”—which would have offered millions of illegal aliens amnesty in exchange for funding to build a border wall with Mexico—might very well have been a medium term gamble by the US President to deny the invaders residence while blaming the Democrats, DC analysts have speculated.

The proposal—which appeared to fly in the face of Trump’s election promises to scrap the extra-constitutional Obama Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—offered participants in that program a 12-year path to residency, and by implication, for their immediate families as well.

The quid pro quo demanded by Trump in return was funding for a border wall, the scrapping of chain migration, and the ending of the “Diversity Lottery.”

Weeks of debate on the pros and cons led to four different proposals being submitted to the Senate, and all of them being rejected.

The majority Republican Senate voted down Trump’s plan, where is mustered only 39 votes, leaving the proposals in chaos and just days left to “save” the estimated 1.8 million illegal aliens—and their families—from deportation.

The DACA program is set to end on March 5, but courts in California and New York have issued temporary injunctions requiring the administration to extend DACA. The Department of Justice has appealed those rulings, and the cases are still ongoing, just to add to the confusion.

Now some observers have started speculating that the deadlock was foreseen by Trump, and many well have been a carefully thought-out strategy to end the DACA program, deport all the illegals, and blame the Democrats for it because they “refused to support amnesty.”

Trump called the most recent debate—which has now ended inconclusively—as the “last chance” for action on DACA, a program which he—correctly—has said was a presidential executive order which is illegal in the first instance, because the constitution clearly states that immigration policy is the sole preserve of Congress.

The Senate vote which ended the debate saw Trump’s plan rejected 39 to 60, well short of the 60 yes votes needed to move ahead. Three Democrats voted for the proposal, but 14 GOP senators voted against it, including Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who had blasted the proposal as being “to the left from President Obama’s position.”

If no new compromise is reached, Trump can conceivably end the DACA porogram as promised, and let the law take its course—which will mean the deportation of all those illegally in the US, including the “Dreamers.”

At the same time, Trump can argue—successfully—that he wanted to granted them all amnesty, but it was the Democrats and obstinate Republicans who did not want to agree to the plan.

The next few weeks will bring final clarity to the issue, one way or another.